


Cope with it, it's a long way to go.

by Webtrinsic



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Ahsoka Tano-centric, Ahsoka changes her sabers, Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Force Bond (Star Wars), Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt Ahsoka Tano, Muteness, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s05e05 Tipping Points, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Anakin Skywalker, Quote: The Force works in mysterious ways, Survivor Guilt, The Force, Trauma, obi wan bashing sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:01:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29030568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Webtrinsic/pseuds/Webtrinsic
Summary: Steela Gerrera's death leaves Ahsoka with a hole in her shoulder and the inability to speak.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Darth Maul & Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 10
Kudos: 84





	Cope with it, it's a long way to go.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ahsokasupremacy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahsokasupremacy/gifts).



> honestly steela's death is one of the best moments in the show, also the giant hole in ahsoka's shoulder has my brain screaming whump and still i have not seen any fanfics for it so i did this :) lol my goal this year is to get my account to 300 works and this fic is officially 250 so yay!
> 
> also i feel like ahsoka needed some contention with obi wan so thats in here too

She’s not in the right state of mind. Variables and outcomes racking her brain, each bit of information sitting on her chest. Strangling her lungs as her montrals ring. Lux is behind her, Steela is in the air, _ in her grasp _ , and this is the last stretch. 

It’s why pulling Steela back towards her is so difficult. She’s heavy in Ahsoka’s mind, drowning under the other roars of chaos that comes easy- _ naturally _ in a war zone. A small part of her briefly suggests it’s not as easy as catching Rex or a trooper because she doesn’t particularly like her.  But Ahsoka is ignorantly adamant that’s not it, she couldn’t and wouldn’t exclusively save only the people she liked. Jedi weren’t supposed to take sides- _even though they had_ \- Jedi worked selflessly, and she wouldn’t let Steela fall.

As the other girl comes closer and closer, her fingers extend. A hair's breadth away from connecting, the pressure in her chest pops at a scorching intrusion. A muted scream just barely penetrates the fog surrounding her.

Her body moved with the bolt's momentum, chest pushing forward, as her shoulder and collarbone were seared through before gravity and her own deflated lungs sent her careening backwards.  A hiss crawls through her teeth when the dirt kicks back up into the entry side of her wound. There’s a hole in her torso, dust, dirt, and lint from her top infusing with the charred cauterized flesh.

Pain ricochets throughout her being and she only doesn’t fall into shock because the realization she’d let go of Steela hits her like a pod racer. Launching forward, Ahsoka stares over the edge, her weight on her hands-a choice that only aggravates her injury further. 

Enough that it tears some of the burnt skin open again, blood trickles through her and her vision blurs. Steela’s lifeless corpse looks up at her from down below, and although she’d seen death a thousand times, something in her brain snaps her vocal chords, and trauma marks her.

* * *

She was supposed to call Anakin, check in, let them know Onderon had won it’s final battle. Lux calls instead, watching her wearily, a sweating mass as he talks with her master.

“And why isn’t Ahsoka telling me this?” He’s on edge, she can hear it, dully. A warbling roar sits in the forefront of her mind, and she knows her silence for now is taken as shock.

“She’s in shock sir,” this sends Obi-Wan’s brow up, and Master Skywalker’s down, “She took a bolt through the back, she’s been out of it ever since,”

The two Jedi master’s are horrified, and Obi-Wan can feel as Anakin does something to push the ship faster than it likely can go. 

* * *

The ceremony has begun by the time they get there, and although Anakin is ready to lose his mind in search of his padawan, there's a white sheet over a body that is nearly the same size as his padawan that has his breath catching.

Ahsoka comes into view a second later, somber as she walks beside Saw and Lux. Not even sparing them a glance as she took her position, a comforting hand on Saw’s arm before the man sighs and walks away. 

“This has been quite a journey for our padawan,” Obi Wan notes, likely also gauging her shields to no avail. It isn’t until the ceremony is over that she approaches, looking helplessly small with the upper half of her torso covered in gauze.

Moving forward, Anakin finds himself faltering. Normally he’d place a hand on her shoulder, the one that was flooded with gauze, but he was even further lost when she didn’t stop, she stepped forward until she was hugging him.

Her forehead sitting against his heart, her hold on him weak but that is to be expected. 

“You ready to go home snips?” 

Ahsoka doesn’t know what’s softer, his voice or the hand petting her back head tail. She knew he meant the temple, or potentially even the Resolute, but he felt more like home than anything else so she nodded. Uncaring of wherever they went so long as her big brother was there.

* * *

It takes two days for Anakin to realize there is more to her silence, and as they sit in with the mind healers he begrudges that their holo call, the last time he’d ever heard her voice, was so serious and tinged with sadness.

The healer isn’t gentle as she claims it’s a mental wound, one that they don’t believe can be fixed because there simply isn’t the time or energy they could put into it. They are still at war and a single padawan, even the chosen one’s padawan, couldn’t be put above the other more pressing injuries they were facing.

The council weighs the option of sending her to reserves, but even still, she is talented and she can still raise her sabers and fight.

* * *

She is a commander who cannot command her troops. She is a padawan who cannot truly answer her master. She is a bearer of bad news who cannot bear any news at all, and she is a mentor to younglings who can no longer offer any wisdom.

It changes everything.

Anakin, the man who loved so dearly and broke so deeply when confronted why he should not, watched her with guilty eyes. As if it had been him who’d dropped Steela. As if it had been him that’d shot her through the back.

The words trapped in her throat always feel closest when she wants to offer assurance. That and when indignant anger flares. Her silence has slowly but surely been humbling her, and although it is a slow process, it’s devastatingly effective.

“Two steps forward, one step back,” Obi-Wan tells her, and he sounds so much like everyone else on the council, the sight of him starts to sicken her. 

They’re camped out, raring for a battle, and without thinking she is bunching her kyber crystals into her hands and utilizing the force, pulling back the green and yellow and forcing them into a luminescent blue. 

Green seemed too evil a color for her to weild. 

* * *

When Anakin sees her sabers, he nearly takes a bolt himself. Their bond had been shaky ever since the revelation she’d never speak again. They were still working out how to interact with each other in a way that wasn’t witty banter or the screaming out of scores for each enemy killed.

Although at the end of the battle, Ahsoka looked up at him with a gentle but unsure smile, motioning to R2 who projected the number sixty three. His smirk broke through his cheek and brightly she returned it.

“Looks like you got me this time snips, fifty four,” 

The girl excitedly jumps off the ground for a second, body shaking with quiet laughter, before she skips ahead towards the Resolute; happier than she’d been in weeks.

* * *

A trooper asks her a question, and she sees it clearly in his eyes and throughout the force how much he regrets it. Taking it in stride, Ahsoka gestures towards Rex before returning the quivering salute the clone gives her. Once the trooper is out of sight, she quietly excuses herself and heads back to her room.

The scream stuck in her throat never passes her lips, and Ahsoka realizes all too suddenly they’ll never let her be a knight.

* * *

Her dreams blur between memories and nightmares as if they weren’t already one in the same. Steela’s death is one that’s been playing on repeat, but it’s never exactly the same.

Sometimes she’s in Steela’s body, falling to her death and watching herself fail from below. Fear makes her hit the ground faster, and when she dies she doesn’t wake up. She sits in the darkness with a muted scream _, abandoned_.

In the dreams where she’s in her own body, the bolt doesn’t always go through her shoulder. Sometimes it goes straight through her heart, and all she knows is she deserves it. Other times it's lower and she finds herself holding her strung apart organs in her cracked and bloodied hands.

Anakin normally comes in and wakes her, the only thing saving her from death drenched dreams that her body refuses to wake from. And no matter how tired he is, he stays, and sometimes he falls asleep comforting her. 

* * *

She’s stranded alone with Obi-Wan and the tension is palpable, so much so he falls back into old tactics to make her react, leaving Ahsoka to wonder if he forgot she can’t kriffing speak.  Her eyes bore into the flickering flames, the heat dancing against her skin, and she’s sitting close enough that she knows Obi-Wan wants to reprimand her, or even pull her back. 

Every time he steps by she braces for contact that doesn’t ever come, and maybe it’s for the best. She’s afraid that if he did she may start swinging. It’s possible he knows that too, and the broken look in his eyes let’s her know he feels as if he deserves it, and even if she could, she wouldn’t refute it.

* * *

Ahsoka cannot defend herself in her trial, nor can she vent her frustration to her master that he didn’t come for her. But in the end, as she closes his hand over her padawan beads and turns her back on him, they understand what she means. That this is the end.

* * *

The togruta cannot ask the once sith-lord what he wants with her master, her older brother, so she takes his hand. A bond being formed, and across the bond she is able to speak, she had spoken with Anakin this way before for some time, but she could tell it made him uncomfortable.  Likely because her inner and outside voice came with different weights. It was just another reminder she was scarred and he’d never truly hear her laugh without echo. 

Maul listens to her inside voice with glee, and she wonders if it’s because his outside voice and inside voice were mirrored, the only real difference she could see was the distant screams and shadows roaring within in an encore on the inside.

It’s an odd comfort, especially when it reminds her of bombs breaking the ground in battle.

* * *

_‘Anakin,’_ it’s in his head, shouted across their bond, and she knows it’s not the voice he wants to hear, it’s not the voice she wants to portray, but it’s enough of a shock that Dooku doesn’t lose his head. 

Palpatine does.

* * *

The twins coo in response to her tickling, and Ahsoka hopes they understand it as her way of saying hello, Anakin and Padme watch the scene unfold, and although she cannot say it verbally, they know she loves them in the same way they love her.

**Author's Note:**

> Snap: allisonw1122  
> Tumblr/twitter: webtrinsic1122  
> Insta:Webtrinsic


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